Eric Dane first realized something might be wrong when he suddenly struggled to use chopsticks during a family dinner.
“I’m eating sushi with my kids and suddenly I can’t work the chopsticks with my right hand. My hand tingles, and then my fingers feel numb,” Dane wrote in an excerpt from his posthumous memoir, “My Book of Days,” obtained by People. He recalled that the first symptom he noticed occurred on Jan. 7, 2024.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” actor, who publicly revealed his ALS diagnosis the following year in 2025, initially dismissed the episode as “some kind of weird nerve thing.” He said he tried to “shake it off,” assuming he was “probably texting too much.”
“Three weeks later, it happens again, only worse. I can’t grip the chopsticks at all,” Dane wrote.
The second incident began what Dane described as a nine-month search for answers. He was ultimately diagnosed with ALS by Dr. Mark Terrelonge, associate program director of neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco.
“I have been diagnosed with ALS. I am grateful to have my loving family by my side as we navigate this next chapter. … I kindly ask that you give my family and I privacy during this time,” Dane announced in 2025.
At the time of his announcement, he also confirmed that he would return as Cal Jacobs in the third season of “Euphoria.”
Dane appeared posthumously in the HBO series for the first time during its second episode, which aired April 19—two months after his death on Feb. 19 at age 53 following his battle with ALS.
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During a June 16, 2025, appearance on “Good Morning America,” Dane spoke about the first symptom he experienced before receiving his diagnosis. “I started experiencing some weakness in my right hand, and I didn’t really think anything of it at the time,” he said.
Dane said he wondered whether he had “been texting too much” or whether his “hand was fatigued.” But “a few weeks later,” he noticed that the weakness “had gotten a little worse.”
He also revealed that his dominant right arm had eventually “completely stopped working.”
When Diane Sawyer, now 80, asked whether his left arm remained “fine,” Dane answered, “No, it’s going.” He added that he believed he had only “a few more months” of use left.
In another section of his memoir, which is scheduled for release Nov. 3, Dane recounted a frightening incident in which his youngest daughter, Georgia, and a friend rescued him from drowning during a vacation.
He said he called his estranged wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and told her, “I can’t swim, Rebecca. … I can’t swim.”
“She explodes into tears, and I weep with her. We cry together. Finally, the tears slow, become reduced to gasps, and when we’re both cried out, Rebecca says, ‘I was afraid of this day. I knew it would come. I’ve been dreading it,’” Dane wrote.
He also wrote about the heartbreaking phone call he made to Gayheart to tell her about his ALS diagnosis.